Historically Speaking: Our Fraught Love Affair With Cannabis

Ban it? Tax it? Humans have been hounded by these questions for millennia.

The Wall Street Journal

January 19, 2024

Ohio’s new marijuana law marks a watershed moment in the decriminalization of cannabis: more than half of Americans now live in places where recreational marijuana is legal. It is a profound shift, but only the latest twist in the long and winding saga of society’s relationship with pot.

Humans first domesticated cannabis sativa around 12,000 years ago in Central and East Asia as hemp, mostly for rope and other textiles. Later, some adventurous forebears found more interesting uses. In 2008, archaeologists in northwestern China discovered almost 800 grams of dried cannabis containing high levels of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, among the burial items of a seventh century B.C. shaman.

The Greeks and Romans used cannabis for hemp, medicine and possibly religious purposes, but the plant was never as pervasive in the classical world as it was in ancient India. Cannabis indica, the sacred plant of the god Shiva, was revered for its ability to relieve physical suffering and bring spiritual enlightenment to the holy.

Cannabis gradually spread across the Middle East in the form of hashish, which is smoked or eaten. The first drug laws were enacted by Islamic rulers who feared their subjects wanted to do little else. King al-Zahir Babar in Egypt banned hashish cultivation and consumption in 1266. When that failed, a successor tried taxing hashish instead in 1279. This filled local coffers, but consumption levels soared and the ban was restored.

The march of cannabis continued unabated across the old and new worlds, apparently reaching Stratford-upon-Avon by the 16th century. Fragments of some 400-year-old tobacco pipes excavated from Shakespeare’s garden were found to contain cannabis residue. If not the Bard, at least someone in the household was having a good time.

By the 1600s American colonies were cultivating hemp for the shipping trade, using its fibers for rigs and sails. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew cannabis on their Virginia plantations, seemingly unaware of its intoxicating properties.

Veterans of Napoleon’s Egypt campaign brought hashish to France in the early 1800s, where efforts to ban the habit may have enhanced its popularity. Members of the Club des Hashischins, which included Charles Baudelaire, Honoré de Balzac, Alexander Dumas and Victor Hugo, would meet to compare notes on their respective highs.

ILLUSTRATION: THOMAS FUCHS

Although Queen Victoria’s own physician advocated using cannabis to relieve childbirth and menstrual pains, British lawmakers swung back and forth over whether to tax or ban its cultivation in India.

In the U.S., however, Americans lumped cannabis with the opioid epidemic that followed the Civil War. Early 20th-century politicians further stigmatized the drug by associating it with Black people and Latino immigrants. Congress outlawed nonmedicinal cannabis in 1937, a year after the movie “Reefer Madness” portrayed pot as a corrupting influence on white teenagers.

American views of cannabis have changed since President Nixon declared an all-out War on Drugs more than 50 years ago, yet federal law still classifies the drug alongside heroin. As lawmakers struggle to catch up with the zeitgeist, two things remain certain: Governments are often out of touch with their citizens, and what people want isn’t always what’s good for them.

Historically Speaking: The Many Ingredients of Barbecue

Native Americans, European settlers and African slaves all contributed to creating an American culinary tradition.

The Wall Street Journal

August 18, 2023

There are more than 30,000 BBQ joints in the U.S., but as far as the Michelin Guide is concerned, not one of them is worthy of a coveted star. Many Americans would say that the fault, dear Brutus, is not in ourselves but in the stars.

A 1562 illustration shows Timucua Indians roasting animals on a raised wooden platform, the original form of barbecuing.

The American barbecue—cooking meat with an indirect flame at low temperature over seasoned wood or charcoal—is a centuries-old tradition. (Using the term for any kind of outdoor grilling came much later.) Like America itself, it is a cultural hybrid. Indigenous peoples in the Caribbean and the Americas would place a whole animal carcass on a wooden platform several feet above a fire and let the smoke do the cooking. The first Spanish arrivals were fascinated by the technique, and translated a native word for the platform as “barbacoa.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (right) and Hubert Humphrey celebrate their election victory with barbecue, November 1964.

The Europeans began to barbecue pigs and cattle, non-native animals that easily adapted to the New World. Another important culinary contribution—using a ground trench instead of a raised platform—may have been spread by African slaves. The 18th century African abolitionist Olaudah Equiano described seeing the Miskito of Honduras, a mixed community of Indians and Africans, barbecue an alligator: “Their manner of roasting is by digging a hole in the earth, and filling it with wood, which they burn to coal, and then they lay sticks across, on which they set the meat.”

European basting techniques also played a role. The most popular recipes for barbecue sauce reflect historic patterns of immigration to the U.S.: British colonists used a simple concoction of vinegar and spices, French émigrés insisted on butter, and German settlers preferred their native mustard. In the American West, two New World ingredients, tomatoes and molasses, formed the basis of many sauces. The type of meat became another regional difference: pork was more plentiful in the South, beef in the West.

Although labor-intensive, a barbecued whole hog can feed up to 150 people, making it the ideal food for communal gatherings. In 1793, President George Washington celebrated the laying of the cornerstone for the Capitol building with an enormous barbecue featuring a 500-pound ox.

In the South before the Civil War, a barbecue meant a hog cooked by slaves. The choicest cuts from the pig’s back went to the grandees, hence the phrase “living high on the hog.” Emancipation brought about a culinary reckoning; Southern whites wanting a barbecue had to turn to cookbooks, such as “Mrs Hill’s New Cook Book,” published in 1867 for “inexperienced Southern housekeepers…in this peculiar crisis of our domestic as well as national affairs.”

In the 20th century, the slower rate of urbanization outside the North helped to keep the outdoor barbecue alive. As a Texan, President Lyndon B. Johnson used “barbecue diplomacy” to project a folksy image, breaking with the refined European style of the Kennedys to endear himself to ordinary Americans. The ingredients in Lady Bird Johnson’s barbecue sauce embraced as many regional varieties as possible by including butter, ketchup and vinegar.

Commercial BBQ sauces, which first became available in 1909, offer a convenient substitute for making your own. But for most people, to experience real barbecue requires that other quintessentially American pastime, the road trip. Just leave the Michelin Guide at home.

Historically Speaking: Modern Dentistry’s Painful Past

Just be thankful that your teeth aren’t drilled with a flint or numbed with cocaine

The Wall Street Journal

November 3, 2022

Since the start of the pandemic, a number of studies have uncovered a surprising link: The presence of gum disease, the first sign often being bloody gums when brushing, can make a patient with Covid three times more likely to be admitted to the ICU with complications. Putting off that visit to the dental hygienist may not be such a good idea just now.

Many of us have unpleasant memories of visits to the dentist, but caring for our teeth has come a very long way over the millennia. What our ancestors endured is incredible. In 2006 an Italian-led team of evolutionary anthropologists working in Balochistan, in southwestern Pakistan, found several 9,000-year-old skeletons whose infected teeth had been drilled using a pointed flint tool. Attempts at re-creating the process found that the patients would have had to sit still for up to a minute. Poppies grow in the region, so there may have been some local expertise in using them for anesthesia.

Acupuncture may have been used to treat tooth pain in ancient China, but the chronology remains uncertain. In ancient Egypt, dentistry was considered a distinct medical skill, but the Egyptians still had some of the worst teeth in the ancient world, mainly from chewing on food adulterated with grit and sand. They were averse to dental surgery, relying instead on topical pain remedies such as amulets, mouthwashes and even pastes made from dead mice. Faster relief could be obtained in Rome, where tooth extraction—and dentures—were widely available

ILLUSTRATION: THOMAS FUCHS

In Europe during the Middle Ages, dentistry fell under the purview of barbers. They could pull teeth but little else. The misery of mouth pain continued unabated until the early 18th century, when the French physician Pierre Fauchard became the first doctor to specialize in teeth. A rigorous scientist, Fauchard helped to found modern dentistry by recording his innovative methods and discoveries in a two-volume work, “The Surgeon Dentist.”

Fauchard elevated dentistry to a serious profession on both sides of the Atlantic. Before he became famous for his midnight ride, Paul Revere earned a respectable living making dentures. George Washington’s false teeth were actually a marvel of colonial-era technology, combining human teeth with elephant and walrus ivory to create a realistic look.

During the 1800s, the U.S. led the world in dental medicine, not only as an academic discipline but in the standardization of the practice, from the use of automatic drills to the dentist’s chair.

Perhaps the biggest breakthrough was the invention of local anesthetic in 1884. In July of that year, Sigmund Freud published a paper in Vienna on the potential uses of cocaine. Four months later in America, Richard Hall and William S. Halsted, whose pioneering work included the first radical mastectomy for breast cancer, decided to test cocaine’s numbing properties by injecting it into their dental nerves. Hall had an infected incisor filled without feeling a thing.

For patients, the experiment was a miracle. For Hall and Halsted, it was a disaster; both became cocaine addicts. Fortunately, dental surgery would be made safe by the invention of non-habit forming Novocain 20 years later.

With orthodontics, veneers, implants and teeth whiteners, dentists can give anyone a beautiful smile nowadays. But the main thing is that oral care doesn’t have to hurt, and it could just save your life. So make that appointment.

Historically Speaking: When Generals Run the State

Military leaders have been rulers since ancient times, but the U.S. has managed to keep them from becoming kings or dictators.

The Wall Street Journal

April 29, 2022

History has been kind to General Ulysses S. Grant, less so to President Grant. The hero of Appomattox, born 200 years ago this month, oversaw an administration beset by scandal. In his farewell address to Congress in 1876, Grant insisted lamely that his “failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent.”

Yet Grant’s presidency could as well be remembered for confirming the strength of American democracy at a perilous time. Emerging from the trauma of the Civil War, Americans sent a former general to the White House without fear of precipitating a military dictatorship. As with the separation of church and state, civilian control of the military is one of democracy’s hard-won successes.

In ancient times, the earliest kings were generals by definition. The Sumerian word for leader was “Lugal,” meaning “Big Man.” Initially, a Lugal was a temporary leader of a city-state during wartime. But by the 24th century B.C., Lugal had become synonymous with governor. The title wasn’t enough for Sargon the Great, c. 2334—2279 B.C., who called himself “Sharrukin,” or “True King,” in celebration of his subjugation of all Sumer’s city-states. Sargon’s empire lasted for three more generations.

In subsequent ancient societies, military and political power intertwined. The Athenians elected their generals, who could also be political leaders, as was the case for Pericles. Sparta was the opposite: The top Spartan generals inherited their positions. The Greek philosopher Aristotle described the Spartan monarchy—shared by two kings from two royal families—as a “kind of unlimited and perpetual generalship,” subject to some civic oversight by a 30-member council of elders.

ILLUSTRATION: THOMAS FUCHS

By contrast, ancient Rome was first a traditional monarchy whose kings were expected to fight with their armies, then a republic that prohibited actively serving generals from bringing their armies back from newly conquered territories into Italy, and finally a militarized autocracy led by a succession of generals-cum-emperors.

In later periods, boundaries between civil and military leadership blurred in much of the world. At the most extreme end, Japan’s warlords seized power in 1192, establishing the Shogunate, essentially a military dictatorship, and reducing the emperor to a mere figurehead until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Napoleon trod a well-worn route in his trajectory from general to first consul, to first consul for life and finally emperor.

After defeating the British, General George Washington might have gone on to govern the new American republic in the manner of Rome’s Julius Caesar or England’s Oliver Cromwell. Instead, Washington chose to govern as a civilian and step down at the end of two terms, ensuring the transition to a new administration without military intervention. Astonished that a man would cling to his ideals rather than to power, King George III declared if Washington stayed true to his word, “he will be the greatest man in the world.”

The trust Americans have in their army is reflected in the tally of 12 former generals who have been U.S. presidents, from George Washington to Dwight D Eisenhower. President Grant may not have fulfilled the hopes of the people, but he kept the promise of the republic.

Historically Speaking: How Malaria Brought Down Great Empires

A mosquito-borne parasite has impoverished nations and stopped armies in their tracks

The Wall Street Journal

October 15, 2021

Last week brought very welcome news from the World Health Organization, which approved the first-ever childhood vaccine for malaria, a disease that has been one of nature’s grim reapers for millennia.

Originating in Africa, the mosquito-borne parasitic infection left its mark on nearly every ancient society, contributing to the collapse of Bronze-Age civilizations in Greece, Mesopotamia and Egypt. The boy pharaoh Tutankhamen, who died around 1324 BC, suffered from a host of conditions including a club foot and cleft palate, but malaria was likely what killed him.

Malaria could stop an army in its tracks. In 413 BC, at the height of the disastrous Sicilian Expedition, malaria sucked the life out of the Athenian army as it lay siege to Syracuse. Athens never recovered from its losses and fell to the Spartans in 404 BC.

But while malaria helped to destroy the Athenians, it provided the Roman Republic with a natural barrier against invaders. The infested Pontine Marshes south of Rome enabled successive generations of Romans to conquer North Africa, the Middle East and Europe with some assurance they wouldn’t lose their own homeland. Thus, the spread of classical civilization was carried on the wings of the mosquito. In the 5th century, though, the blessing became a curse as the disease robbed the Roman Empire of its manpower.

Throughout the medieval era, malaria checked the territorial ambitions of kings and emperors. The greatest beneficiary was Africa, where endemic malaria was deadly to would-be colonizers. The conquistadors suffered no such handicap in the New World.

ILLUSTRATION: JAMES STEINBERG

The first medical breakthrough came in 1623 after malaria killed Pope Gregory XV and at least six of the cardinals who gathered to elect his successor. Urged on by this catastrophe to find a cure, Jesuit missionaries in Peru realized that the indigenous Quechua people successfully treated fevers with the bark of the cinchona tree. This led to the invention of quinine, which kills malarial parasites.

For a time, quinine was as powerful as gunpowder. George Washington secured almost all the available supplies of it for his Continental Army during the War of Independence. When Lord Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in 1781, less than half his army was fit to fight: Malaria had incapacitated the rest.

During the 19th century, quinine helped to turn Africa, India and Southeast Asia into a constellation of European colonies. It also fueled the growth of global trade. Malaria had defeated all attempts to build the Panama Canal until a combination of quinine and better mosquito control methods led to its completion in 1914. But the drug had its limits, as both Allied and Axis forces discovered in the two World Wars. While fighting in the Pacific Theatre in 1943, General Douglas MacArthur reckoned that for every fighting division at his disposal, two were laid low by malaria.

A raging infection rate during the Vietnam War was malaria’s parting gift to the U.S. in the waning years of the 20th century. Between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. Army suffered an estimated 391,965 sick-days from malaria cases alone. The disease didn’t decide the war, but it stacked the odds.

Throughout history, malaria hasn’t had to wipe out entire populations to be devastating. It has left them poor and enfeebled instead. With the advent of the new vaccine, the hardest hit countries can envisage a future no longer shaped by the disease.

WSJ Historically Speaking: For Feb. 29, Tales of the Calendar Wars

A carved Mayan calendar on textured background. Despite the provisional nature of calendars, two real phenomena govern almost all of them: the phases of the moon and the rotations of the sun. PHOTO: ISTOCK

A carved Mayan calendar on textured background. Despite the provisional nature of calendars, two real phenomena govern almost all of them: the phases of the moon and the rotations of the sun. PHOTO: ISTOCK

Every four years on Feb. 29, we are reminded of one of life’s most puzzling conundrums: Time is both arbitrary and immutable. The “leap” making its appearance this Monday shows that the Western calendar on which we place so much reliance is a conceit—a piece of fiction introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in October 1582.

Despite the provisional nature of calendars, two real phenomena govern almost all of them: the phases of the moon and the rotations of the sun. Our Mesolithic ancestors were the first people to harness the movements of the cosmos to provide a fixed notion of the past, the present and the future. The oldest known calendar in the world was discovered in a Scottish field in 2013, notched into the earth some 10,000 years ago. Our forebears had created it by shaping 12 specially dug pits around a 164-foot arc to mimic the phases of the moon and track the months. Continue reading…